There are 119 reasons why nothing will change in the wake of the Lake Oroville spillway disaster, why this repetitive flooding and evacuation pattern will continue interminably.

There is one reason for hope.

Of the 120 people in the state Legislature, which has failed to address this problem for decades, exactly one of them was evacuated from his home on Feb. 12. So, yeah, he takes this personally.

James Gallagher lives in Yuba City. On that Sunday afternoon, he was visiting his grandfather’s home in Rio Oso, a few miles south. The day before, he had been up at Lake Oroville, watching water cascade down the lake’s so-called emergency spillway for the first time ever. Like everybody else, he assumed Sunday that all was well, because that’s what the state Department of Water Resources told him.

Then one of the assemblyman’s staff members forwarded him an email from DWR telling all residents in the Feather River corridor to evacuate. Gallagher headed with his family to his father’s house on higher ground to the east.

The next day he went to evacuation centers. He has been sympathetic toward the victims because he was one of them. He has been frustrated with the excuses and lack of answers over how it happened. He has been disgusted that few seem to realize the significant changes that must happen to avoid this again.

Because it’s not just about one two-day evacuation.

He lived on the Feather River in 1997 when most of Oroville, Yuba City, Marysville and Plumas Lake were evacuated.

He was 5 years old in 1986 when there was another evacuation.

“The past is the best indicator of what you’ll do in the future,” Gallagher said. “The status quo is not acceptable. I’m tired of being where we’ve been because I’ve grown up with this.”

Though there have been some changes to levees over the years, there haven’t been nearly enough. Gallagher knows all about the years of inaction. He’s learning quickly about Butte County’s distrust of DWR. And he’s uniquely positioned to play a role in getting things fixed.

As a legislative hearing in Sacramento in April, he was the only legislator to pick up on a statement that probably made every Butte County resident choke — when the DWR’s leader said, “The emergency spillway worked.”

Gallagher jumped on that ridiculous statement. His reaction was important, because DWR was trying to sugarcoat the severity of what happened. Gallagher knows better.

“Somebody has to ask the tough questions about how this happened and why we got here in the first place — and I’m going to do that,” Gallagher said during a meeting with our editorial board Thursday. “I’ll talk about the reconstruction and how we’ll improve things but I’m not going to ignore the past. I’m going to ask how we got here.”

Still, most of the Legislature is ready to move on now that the immediate crisis has passed. Other legislators may trust DWR when it says things will get fixed. Gallagher knows better — but he’ll need allies in the Legislature to force change.

Gallagher has introduced three bills on issues related to the crisis but also watches as funding requests for levee repairs get shot down. He knows a Republican from a rural district is swimming uphill against floodwaters in Sacramento, but he keeps pushing.

“There’s obviously something that needs to change. I’m going to do everything in my power to see that there’s substantive change,” he said.

So he pushes for transparency on the repairs and honesty about what went wrong.

“One of the things I’ve been delving into is, how did we get here?” Gallagher wondered. “Were there things we noticed, or should have noticed? How did we get to point where a spillway broke when it wasn’t even running up to its full capacity?”

The spillway gets older. The levees get older. The dam gets older. There’s no reason to believe things will magically get better. It’s a good thing Gallagher is in Sacramento, reminding his fellow legislators of that.

Editor David Little’s column appears each Sunday. Contact him at dlittle@chicoer.com.